Blogs from San Francisco, California, United States, North America - page 187

Trip back to San Francisco was fairly easy and we dropped Jason back at the airport to make his way back to UK. Sarah, Dave, Mark, Beckie and myself then stayed in San Fran for a few more days to take in the sights of the city. We stayed in "The Opal" hotel on Van Ness. Good value place and you get breakfast thrown in. Its near some good transport links so is a pretty good bet for the cost conscious! After managing to return the fun bus to Budget in their underground car park (Dave and I did not think we were going to make it down the ramp in places - very tight!) We walked into China town past the cathedral and some other historic buildings. China town was a slightly mad place with ... read more

Ok, this will be the final entry to this blog. New Years Eve was amazing in Rome and I wanted to share a short piece of what it sounded and looked like. Go to this link for a little taste of what it was like. Thanks for following us around the world. It was a blast! Copy and paste this in your browser: http://www.vimeo.com/clip:128440... read more

Wednesday 4th Jan we left Vegas at 9am, got to airport 2 hrs early for flight at 11.30am. Didn’t take long to get through so alot of waiting around. Arrived in San Fran at 1pm and waiting another hour and a half for our luggage and to get to our hotel. We finally arrived at our hotel, checked in and went for a walk. The hotel looked very fancy with statues and marble but when we got up to our room it’s just your standard room. So we went for a walk and it took a block to find someone with a full set of teeth! I think we are in a dodgy area. But once we got passed that part all was fine! Had a look around there Westfield shops- 8 levels! But the levels ... read more

The last time I was in San Francisco was on a females-only-family-trip almost 2 decades ago. It was Mom, Aunty Molly, Big Sister, Middle Sister and me - quelle nightmare - picture The Joy Luck Club on amphetamines :p Mom the Chanel-clad tour-Nazi totally in competition with her spinster banker sister Aunty Molly who lived in Canada which naturally made her the SF expert - both of them nostalgically waxing lyrical about their peeps in Chinatown; whilst the 3 of us just rolled our eyes wanting to head back south to Disneyland, Marilyn Monroe's prints at Mann's Chinese Theatre and Tex-Mex. Yeah - that was one for the family albums!!! :) This time we were spending Christmas with Almost Spouse's family - well actually just his Little Bro - who was spending 6 months learning aikido ... read more

The thought of being in an island on New Year’s eve can be really fascinating! Can it? Or maybe not? Well! I was going to find it out. When time came to decide how to spend New Year’s eve, I certainly wanted to keep up the tradition: • not staying at home • doing something that we’ve never done before. Ganesh did not have any specifics. So, Ram was up for it when I brought this up. I was not sure how far this was going to materialize. What to say of the weather? It was the peak of an El Nino December winter. This plan pretty much finalized in the last 1 week. Angel Island is right in the middle of San Francisco bay. Map We had 2 other friends, Charanya & Sriram, join in ... read more